A NEW YEAR – A NEW OUTLOOK ON LIFE

11 Jun 2017

One of my clients recently had a lovely spa experience. Over a couple of days she enjoyed solitude with her partner, massages, yoga classes, read books, the stuff we dream about. Yet, rather than fully immersing herself in the experience and soak up this once in a lifetime treat, she felt something was missing and like she just didn’t feel fully happy.

So why is that? What went wrong?

Well for starters, having been a full time mum for eight years, it felt like she’d lost an appendage being away from her kids. And there was also a big serve of guilt embedded in the experience.

Totally understandable.

When you’ve looked after everyone else but yourself for so long, it’s hard to suddenly change that habit. It takes practice and determination. It takes giving yourself permission!!

Before you start chasing happiness, however, you must also work out what happiness means to you. You can’t search for something you don’t know what is. So have a look at the feelings beneath happiness. What defines happiness for you? What are you truly searching for?

You might think of ‘healthy happy kids’ or ‘financial security’, but in order to truly define happiness you need to look a bit further and work out what is at the core of those things? What feeling lie beneath if you turn your gaze inwards to your deeper emotions? What would healthy kids mean to YOU? To YOUR experience of life?

Achieving happiness isn’t an end goal. It’s a life long journey. It can’t be achieved in a weekend. You might get a glimpse of what it feels like, but to truly cement the feeling, you must do the work. Fortunately, there is nothing more enticing to work than being on the road to happiness.

2016 is still in its early stages, let’s start working out what happiness is now, and cement great habits to achieve it.